Struggling For Survival Interpretation Of O'neill's Autobiographical Play Long Day's Journey Into Night

Eugene O'Neill was the first great playwright of America. Before he became famous in drama, drama in America had been, for the most part, an undistinguished affair. After he received wide acknowledge, the phrase "American drama" began to take on significance. During his lifetime, O'Neill won three Pulitzer Prizes and was awarded the Nobel Prize. Three years after his death, another Pulitzer Prize was granted to him due to the great theatrical success of his autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night.The literary criticism abroad can roughly be divided into four categories: interpretative studies, comparative explorations, historical analysis, biographical and psychobiographical research. In China, the studies of Eugene O'Neill began in 1930s, about ten years later than that in America. The earlier studies include translation of his plays and literary reviews. The first "China National Symposium on Eugene O'Neill" held in Beijing in 1997 brought China's O'Neill study into a new stage. Liao Kedui, Wang Yiqun, Long Wenpei, Liu Haiping, et. al. are the representatives of the scholars. Chinese scholars began the research with the relationship between Chinese literature and culture and O'Neill, analyzed his works, the themes and the devices in his plays, etc.The exploration into the disillusion of American Dream has been mentioned, though not discussed wildly. The thesis attempts to do some research of this issue through his most typical autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night.The main body falls into three chapters. Chapter one includes three parts: part one is about Eugene O'Neill; part two is American Dream in different stages and its development; part three is the embodiment of American Dream in his play Long Day's Journey into Night. Chapter two is the disillusion of American Dream: part one is about the play and its criticisms, part two is the contradiction between dream and reality, part three is the destructive nature of pipe dreams, part four is the philosophical analysis about the setting of the play. Chapter three deals with the deeper reasons of the disillusion of American Dream from three aspects: political, cultural and personal backgrounds. The conclusion is: living in the society...